Ballardemician’s Lane coffee table is looking pretty good. You can see the top in my avatar pic. Some awful pretty maple underneath the varnish. Now I just need to stain the apron and legs and oil that there top. :)

Not sure what it looked like before but very nice now. Good work.
You seem to know about wood and stuff. What if someone had put like varathane (don’t know how to spell it – obviously) on cupboard doors. I assume in order to paint over or possibly stain a darker color, would have to sand all that off. Having 15 cupboards and 6 big drawers, lots of work it looks like. The cupboards right now remind me of Leave It To Beaver era – maybe birch, maybe maple – light. Not my fav at all.
Found out my floors are cedar so leaving them as is, once I get rid of wall-to-wall.

As far as your cabinets go, if you wanted to see the wood, you’d need to strip all the way down to bare wood. It’s not difficult, it just takes a lot of elbow grease. If you want to PAINT them, on the other hand, I’d remove the doors and the hardware, rough everything up with an orbital sander, and paint away. For cabinets, I think you’re going to want an oil-based lacquer for the durability.

Cedar floors–are you sure they are not fir? That seems more likely. Fir floors were just really common here for a long time b/c of it being a native wood.

Allison – I stand corrected. It is fir floors. When I moved in only my bedroom had no carpeting. I thought the wood was gross – too red. Then neighbor doing work on their house & saw they had same thing. Told the worker I had same floors & was going to cover them with that fake wood because thought present flooring ugly – too red. He then pointed out that it was varnish that was causing that. I could sand them down, refinish. That’s what he did and the floors turned out amazing. He also said don’t do that fake wood crap. Fir is very expensive and said it was virgin fir – whatever that means.
Edog – she obviously meant to say “awfully” not “awful”

By virgin, she probably meant “clear” fir which doesn’t have knots in it and is from larger trees, typically old growth. Clear fir is now quite rare and expensive, and yes, it’s beautiful.

I used “awful” rather than “awfully” with some intent–I did so to relay a more folksy or colloquial tone. Clearly the intentional use of vernacular went over the head of at least one reader. He may have even been intentionally trying to find fault in what I said, as he is known for such childish behavior.

Again, right. He did say it was quite rare and expensive. My dad used to be a floor layer and used those big machines for sanding and stuff. In fact, he did the old Ballard High School gym floor. Now at our house – not so much. My mom got tired of waiting for him, and she tackled those big machines herself.
And yes, of course, he is intentionally trying to find fault in what you said. Take anything that person says with a grain of salt.

Why must you act so contentiously? Learn to be kind. Enjoying a boyfriend and house do not make you grown up. Learning to be gracious, tolerant and empathetic provides a path for growth. Get on that path if you want to enjoy life.

PG – I never thought about that. Wonder if under that ugly linoleum there is fir. If so, too much to work to pull up those.
When I first moved in house first thing I did was replace wall-to-wall in livingroom and hallway. When old pulled up, obvious that a previous tenant had a pet that went to the bathroom and some plans overwatered. When I mentioned that to my nephew when talking about going no carpeting but condition of floor with few black stains from pet and plant and some scuffing – he said do you know how many people pay to get that look?

Gracie – we tried to pull it up but the superglue pulled up wood shards as well. It was really sad to see, to be honest with you. Mr PG and a professional flooring dude took one look and said it wasn’t salvageable.

Confusing to me. If you are trying to be “gracious, tolerant and empathetic” as a person, why would you post a critical comment on a public forum? It seems a little ungracious, intolerant and lacking in empathy.

We are also lucky enough to have 100+ years old fir floors in our upstairs. They are amazing. I think we might have the same under the 30s or 50s era oak in our downstairs. The guy who refinished it said he though it might be the last possible refinish for those floors, so if we are still here when it wears out maybe we’ll try pulling up the oak someday.

I remembered what the construction guy said it was shellac (sp?) that was put on the floors and might contribute to it making it reddish. When my neighbor did a major re-construction of their home, he sanded down their fir floors at first by machine. But he said “something called shellac” was gumming up the machine. So he had to do it all by hand. He did a truly amazing job.

That’s the general problem with sanding. The varnish gums up the sandpaper. I generally apply a thick coat of stripper, let it sit, scrape off what I can with a plastic stripper, scrub with lacquer thinner and a green scrubby, then wipe clean with lacquer thinner and a rag. Repeat as needed. Then wipe down with mineral spirits to make sure all of the varnish is gone. It also doesn’t raise the grain.